Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly Reteam For New Comedy HOLMES & WATSON
We may never see a sequel to Step Brothers, but stars Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are reuniting in front of the camera for a different kind of buddy comedy. Deadline reports that they'll star in Holmes & Watson, a new comedy for Sony Pictures that's inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. They're aiming for a PG-13 rating.
Ferrell will play Sherlock Holmes while Reilly will play his sidekick, Dr. John Watson. Back in 2008, the project was moving forward with Sacha Baron Cohen in the Holmes part and Ferrell playing Watson, but it's obviously taken on a different configuration in the intervening years. Etan Cohen (who wrote Tropic Thunder and directed Ferrell in Get Hard) is directing, and filming begins after Thanksgiving this year.
Deadline says that because Holmes stories are so popular right now, there's the hope that Sony and these filmmakers can just go headlong into a full-on comedic version with the audience already knowing who everyone is. Sounds like a recipe for a potentially hilarious riff on detective tropes, and I'm always down to see Ferrell and Reilly share the screen together, so I'm cautiously excited about this one.